An xDSL communication system (xDSL refers to various versions of digital subscriber line systems such as ADSL, VDSL, VDSL2, etc.) consists of Central Office (CO) equipment (i.e. DSLAM) and customer premises equipment (CPE) using the twisted pair wire as a communication channel. In order to provide reliable service, several test standards and metrics have been developed to measure quality of service (QoS), one such standard is referred to in G.996.2 as Single Ended Line Testing for DSL.
Single Ended Line Testing (SELT) is an offline diagnostics procedure, and in general SELT is used at the central office side and is thereby controlled and initiated by the central office/network management system. The CO side SELT diagnostics are initiated by the central office management system either on demand or periodically, as required.
However, it may be desirable to initiate a SELT procedure and collect the diagnostics data from the CPE side. Currently, to initiate SELT on the CPE side, a technician has to visit the customer premises and manually initiate such diagnostics and collect the data. This obviously is an expensive and time consuming task.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for techniques for a CPE to autonomously initiate and/or perform diagnostics such as SELT from the CPE side.